Background

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language that applies presentation (styling, layout, animation) to markup content (such as HTML, XHTML, SVG or XML). It is one of the main components of the Open Web Platform.

First version: The CSS 1 recommendation was described by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos, and first published in 1996.

Current stable version: The CSS 2 recommendation was first published in 1998, but was not completely finished until 2011, despite being effectively stable for a number of years before that. Several modules from CSS3 are also stable as of the time of writing (December 2012). See "Current and future work".

Current and future work: The CSS Working group is working on a number of "modules", which describe different parts of the technology set known as CSS3. Some of these modules are stable, whereas some are in an experimental state and don’t have much support across browsers. There is also work being done on various CSS4 modules, although it will be a while until these are ready for production work. See the CSS working group current work page for more information on what modules/specifications are at what stage of completion.

Contributing to the CSS technology

CSS development is handled by the CSS working group. To find out more, including how to participate, go to the CSS working group home page. For providing feedback and asking questions related to contributing to specs, a good place is the www-style mailing list. Bear in mind that it is not a suitable place for “how do I use CSS to style my web page” type questions. A list of all CSS properties can be found here CSS3 properties Reference

Contributing to the CSS reference pages

As CSS continues to evolve, we’ll continue to improve the docs. Currently, we’re working on CSS properties. To join that project, see WPD/CSS_property_guide.

Index of all CSS topics

The list of CSS properties, below, only includes W3C Recommended values or candidate/proposed recommendations. Use the Special:PrefixIndex/css/ search page to find all articles organized under this page, or the CSS category page for all CSS-related pages in the wiki.